Month / May 2011

by libbyplummer

Hipstamatic – behind the lens

Hipstamatic iPhone appHere’s a feature that I wrote for Pocket-lint.com on the popular Hipstamatic iPhone app. My comments on the viral marketing aspect of the app are referenced on its Wikipedia page.

Do people want photographic prints anymore? Prints are expensive, they fade and all they do is create heavy boxes to carry from home to home throughout our lives when they’re not gathering dust in the attic. Prints are old. So, does anyone care anymore?

“We do”, says Mario Estrada, community director of Hipstamatic, “they’re awesome to shuffle through. I remember being a kid and pouring through my parents shoe box of old prints and I miss that. I want that experience. I don’t want to be old and have to redirect my grandchildren to Facebook to look at my pictures”.

It’s a point that hits undeniable warm notes of nostalgia – one that’s hard to argue with when it’s the very same feeling that’s made Hipstamatic one of the most downloaded apps for iPhone – 1.4 million mobile users worldwide and counting. In the same way that cult brand Lomography is enjoying success with its analogue, film-based snappers, Hipstamatic is getting the same effect in digital form, but the latest move to introduce the HipstaMart Print Lab service – offering genuine, old-school prints made from your mobile camera shots – brings the whole ethos full circle. So, where did the idea of this low grade retro look digital camera application come from in the first place? Estrada explains:

“We heard a story about a plastic camera that once existed and we liked it”.

You can read the rest of the article here on Pocket-lint.com (originally published 16/11/10).

by libbyplummer

Music streaming subscriptions are the way forward, says Featured Artists Coalition

Mark Kelly Featured Artists CoalitionHere’s a exclusive interview that I did for Pocket-lint.com with FAC CEO and Marillion keyboardist Mark Kelly.

Spotify recently announced that its free music streaming service wouldn’t be quite so free anymore, with subscription-free listening now reduced from 20 hours to 10. While there might be a groan from those who signed up for the service all that time ago, what exactly does it mean for the musicians behind the tracks?

The music industry is a complicated beast, so we had a chat with Featured Artists Coalition CEO, Mark Kelly (pictured right with Marillion band mate Steve Hogarth) to shed some light on the subject. He told us:

“It’s a difficult one to judge. I can understand why Spotify is doing what it’s doing and why it’s doing it as there’s a lot of pressure on the brand as it’s trying to get into the US market. Our main criticism of Spotify is the deals that it’s made with the labels under Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA). That means that the artists have no idea what the details of the agreements are but we very much doubt that the labels will be sharing all the money that they make off the back of them with the musicians that provide the content in the first place.”

The advent of downloading and streaming music has changed the face of the music industry forever, often at a cost to the people that actually produce the sounds. The way that the business runs has failed to keep pace with technological change. In the wake of reduced royalties and illegal downloads, the Featured Artist Coalition (FAC) was set up to campaign for the protection of UK performers’ and musicians’ rights.

You can read the rest of the article here on Pocket-lint.com (originally published 27/04/11).